The Marriage Spell by Mary Jo Putney

really be reversed. If an elderly person has a specific health problem, it might be fixable, but with age, the whole body declines. We can’t cure that. There are also diseases that damage the whole body. They are very hard to cure.” She thought of the insidious disease that had killed her mother. “The healing gift is limited. We may be able to give some people extra life, but there are very real limitations.”
    â€œIs this why it is not generally known that miracles are sometimes possible—so that people won’t ask more than you can give?”
    She nodded. “If our best work was common knowledge, every healer in the land would be besieged by desperate people. Their anger when they learned how little we can do would be…terrifying. It is better if people come expecting only small healings. Those can usually be managed.”
    He nodded, curiosity satisfied. “How soon do you think I can return home? Surely I will heal faster there, and it’s just across the valley.”
    â€œPerhaps a week. It depends on how quickly you regain your strength.” She sympathized with his distaste for lying in bed—she was a restless patient herself. “My grandfather was unwell the last years of his life. This was his room, to spare him from climbing stairs. He also had a wheelchair so he could move around the ground floor. It’s up in the attic, I believe. Shall I have it brought down for your use?”
    â€œOh, please,” he said fervently. “I am already tiring of this otherwise attractive room.” His eyes drifted shut.
    Tenderly she tucked the coverlet around him. Then she forced herself to step away, hands clenched against temptation. She wanted to run her hands down those long, powerful limbs, but she didn’t have a lover’s right to touch him that way even though they were discussing marriage.
    Though she’d known he must be weaned from her energy soon, she hadn’t realized how much the loss would weaken him. Now he would probably need to stay longer at Barton Grange.
    That hadn’t been her intention, but she couldn’t regret it.

Chapter
VII
    M ore cautious than the evening before, Jack didn’t try to get out of bed the next morning. He did insist on sitting up against pillows and asking for reading material; then he chased Morris away. He no longer needed a full-time attendant, and it was unnerving to have Morris sit there watching all day.
    He was going to have to return to Yorkshire.
The one clear advantage of death was that it would have removed the obligation to sort out the problems at the family estate. A second cousin he barely knew would be the next Lord Frayne, and perhaps the sorting process would have been easier for someone less closely connected.
    He’d rather be alive and heading north than dead. But it was a close call.
    Frowning, he forced himself to concentrate on the week-old newspaper. It was a relief when Ashby and Lucas Winslow stopped by for a visit. Despite their mud-splashed hunting pinks, they were a welcome sight.
    He set the paper aside gladly. “Tell me about what great runs you’ve been having so I can suffer the torments of envy.”
    â€œYou will be pleased to hear that it was a bad day’s hunting,” Lucas said cordially. “The hounds had trouble finding and we spent much of our time sitting around on our horses in the rain and trying to remember why we do this.”
    Ashby brushed droplets from his well-cut coat. “Worse, now that the hunt has ended for the day, the sun is coming out.”
    â€œI’ll try not to gloat over your bad day,” Jack promised. “Shall I ring for tea? My jailer allows me certain privileges.”
    Before his friends could reply, his chief jailer entered, pushing a wheeled chair in front of her. Jack felt his usual ambivalence at her presence, an uncertainty about whether to think of her as a compassionate female who had saved his